The Retention Excellence Awards are now accepting nominations until March 16, 2018.Learn more and apply.

We know from our work in student satisfaction and motivation what is important to students throughout their academic lifecycle and the specific requests for support first-year students make. Have you localized these and other data to improve student life, learning and outcomes on your campus? Please share your program and your journey with others on the same path by applying for the 2018 Lee Noel and Randi Levitz Retention Excellence Award. Winning programs will be showcased at the Ruffalo Noel Levitz National Conference, in a national webinar, on our website, and used as a resource by colleges and universities across the nation to enhance their own efforts.

I would like to receive instruction in the most effective ways to take college exams.

78.4%

I would like help selecting an educational plan that will prepare me to get a good job.

70.2%

I would like to talk to someone about getting a scholarship.

67.2%

I would like to find out more about the clubs and social organizations at my college.

66.8%

I would like to talk with someone about qualifications needed for certain occupations.

66.3%

I would like to receive some help in improving my study habits.

61.4%

I would like to attend an informal gathering where I can meet some new friends.

59.2%

I would like to talk with someone about the salaries and future outlook for various occupations.

57.1%

I would like to talk with someone about the advantages and disadvantages of various occupations.

51.1%

I would like to talk to someone about getting a part-time job during the regular school year.

50.7%

Has your campus been able to address these student needs and interest in ways that improve student and institutional success? It is clear students value effective faculty and quality instruction, and that they want to bring strong study habits and exam skills into the classroom. Students also desire advising and information on majors, outcomes by major, type of employment, and salaries.

If your campus has experienced progress in student success, retention and graduation rates, and career outcomes, I invite you to submit an application for the 2018 Lee Noel and Randi Levitz Retention Excellence Award.

I hope you’ve taken advantage of the data and research we make available to support your efforts (see sampling of reports and resources below). We invite you to contribute to this body of information by nominating an effective retention program for the 2018 Lee Noel and Randi Levitz Retention Excellence Awards. Over the years, more than 170 colleges and universities have been honored with Retention Excellence Awards, as you can read in this compendium. If you’re looking for new ideas to develop guided pathways, identify at-risk students and successful practices, or to create a comprehensive retention plan, take a moment to explore the retention programs that past winners have shared.

Applications are now being accepted and you will find the criteria for the awards online. The application is brief and is similar to submitting a proposal to present at a conference. Up to three winners will be recognized. The honor includes a free conference registration to the Ruffalo Noel Levitz National Conference being held in Orlando, July 24-26, 2018. Winners are featured in a national webinar hosted by Ruffalo Noel Levitz, and will serve as a judge in selecting the 2018 winners.

That is a question that the Lee Noel and Randi Levitz Retention Excellence Awards tackle every year. This program honors exceptional college student retention programs from around the country, recognizing the most innovative and effective programs that have helped more students persist, succeed, and complete their educational goals. More than 160 institutions have been honored since the awards began in 1989, and the winners include campuses of every size, type, and mission: four-year privates, four-year publics, and community, junior, and technical colleges.

The three most recent winners serve as models for institutional leaders who would like to develop and fine-tune programs as diverse as recruit back and reverse transfer, strategic retention planning, and developmental math and English success rates.

The University of Central Oklahoma: Operation Degree Completion
Operation Degree Completion is a two-step program. The first part involves tracking down students who have disappeared from campus even though they have completed almost all of their requirements and guiding them to graduation. The second step builds on reverse transfer trends by identifying transfer students who have enough credits to receive an associate’s degree from the originating community college. This innovative program is improving institutional graduation rates and represented $1.7 million in additional tuition revenue.

Edgewood College (WI): Strategic Retention Plan
Edgewood College’s Strategic Retention Plan is a multi-year, collegewide project that puts students and their success at the heart of what the college does. The plan includes initiatives for first-year and second-year students. The plan’s objectives are reviewed annually and action steps are updated quarterly by the retention council. This comprehensive approach has been successful in improving student success. For example, four-year graduation rates have increased from 27 percent in 2005 to 40 percent in 2014. Student satisfaction and engagement have also increased.

Grand Rapids Community College (MI): Fast Track
Supported by a U.S. Department of Education Title III grant, Grand Rapids Community College created Fast Track – a program to help students bypass developmental education with an emphasis on retention and completion. Fast Track is an intensive three-week, 14-hour-per-week learning lab in which students remediate academic skills through a combination of web-based and tutor-guided activities. Fast Track participation saved a total of $324,000 worth of in-district tuition, fees, and books for students, as well as a total of 33,480 hours of instruction for students who bypassed their placement.

You can hear how these institutions launched, nurtured, and grew these initiatives into effective retention programs by listening to the webinar spotlighting these three institutions:

Be recognized for your college student retention success story

Do you have a successful retention program you would like to share? Apply for a 2016 Retention Excellence Award. Applications are now being accepted until March 18. If chosen, your institution will be honored at an award ceremony during the 2016 Ruffalo Noel Levitz National Conference on Student Recruitment Marketing and Retention, July 26-28, 2016 in Dallas, Texas. Sharing your story will help inspire other institutions as they work to improve college student retention and completion.

A common theme among these programs is the importance of innovation in retention.

University of Central Oklahoma helps students and former students become alumni

The Operation Degree Completion program at the University of Central Oklahoma has two steps. The first step is to track down students who have disappeared from campus even after completing almost all of the requirements to graduate and then guide them to graduation. The solution could be changing a major to a more general degree, or taking just one more course, or simply applying for graduation. The full-time advisor for the program knows a little about re-admissions and financial aid and a lot about persistence!

The second step builds on reverse transfer trends by identifying transfer students who have enough credits to receive an associate’s degree from the originating community college. Unofficial transcripts are provided to the community college for each eligible student, and a degree check is run by the community college adviser. Students are then contacted and informed of their new degrees. How innovative is it to improve institutional graduation rates with students who have already achieved (or almost achieved) the requirements and simply don’t know it? Can you imagine how thrilled these students must be?

Result: Since the inception of Operation Degree Completion, the university has awarded 270 bachelor’s degrees, exceeding its goal one year early, and is on track to facilitate more than 2,000 associate degrees. In addition, the program generated an additional 10,651 credit hours due to students returning to complete their degrees. This represents $1.7 million in additional tuition revenue.

Edgewood College’s Strategic Retention Plan is a multiyear, collegewide project. The Strategic Retention Plan guides efforts to puts students and their success at the heart of what the college does. One initial step of the plan was to establish a group of faculty, staff, and students to research and make recommendations to strengthen the first-year experience. Action steps included establishing a common reading program, expanding the first-year seminar to a three-credit academically-oriented class, expanding the early alert program, and revising the academic advising infrastructure.

Once Edgewood College experienced success with first-year students, they turned their attention to second-year students. Activities included a “sophomore summit” to share research findings, the development of a “welcome to the academic department” program, and a more comprehensive approach to working with students who have not yet declared a major. Edgewood’s Strategic Retention Plan objectives are reviewed annually and action steps are updated quarterly by the retention council. While many of these initiatives are commonly recognized best practices, Edgewood’s comprehensive approach has been innovative and successful in improving student success.

Result: Since committing to this approach, retention for first-year students has steadily increased from a low of 66 percent in 2005 to a high of 82 percent in 2012. Four-year graduation has increased from 27 percent in 2005 to 40 percent in 2014. Five-year graduation has increased from 48 percent in 2005 to 55 percent in 2014. In addition, students indicate higher levels of engagement and satisfaction, and alumni continue to report strong employment and graduate school placement rates.

Grand Rapids Community College develops a program to help students bypass developmental education

Supported by a U.S. Department of Education Title III grant, Grand Rapids Community College created FastTrack–a program to help students bypass developmental education with an emphasis on retention and completion. FastTrack is an intensive three-week, 14-hour-per-week learning lab in which students remediate academic skills through a combination of web-based and tutor-guided activities. There are specific labs for reading, English, and math. The purpose of the program is to give developmental students an opportunity to accelerate skill building so they are able to bypass developmental course work and move directly into college-level courses. Eligible students are referred to FastTrack after they complete their placement tests, and students who choose to participate must accept the requirements to participate in the program (including completing a mandatory student success plan with an advisor and working with a college success coach).

FastTrack is free for qualifying students. Once they complete the program, they are eligible to retake the placement exam for the subject they remediated. This is an innovative approach that avoids students getting slowed down in a semester-long developmental class and gets them into college-level classes sooner and more successfully.

Result: Since FastTrack’s implementation in 2012, 837 students have been recruited for the program and 651 students successfully completed the three-week program. Of those 651 students, 449 were successful in their retake of the placement test and were able to avoid one or more developmental education courses. FastTrack participation saved a total of $324,000 worth of in-district tuition, fees, and books for students, as well as a total of 33,480 hours of instruction for students who bypassed their placement.

What are you doing to improve student success on your campus? Consider sharing your approach with us by applying for next year’s Retention Excellence Awards. The application will be available in March 2016. In the meantime, feel free to contact me if you have questions about successful retention practices in general.

Tim Culver examines past winners of the Retention Excellence Awards and analyzes consistently-successful characteristics that may work well for other institutions.

In 1989, Lee Noel and Randi Levitz created the Retention Excellence Awards (REA) to honor colleges and universities that had established the most successful, state-of-the art retention programs. Since the program began, 26 community colleges, 31 private four-year campuses, and 84 public four-year colleges and universities have received Retention Excellence Awards. Every year, they are honored at the National Conference on Student Recruitment, Marketing, and Retention. As a result of this national exposure, these award-winning programs have served as models of retention excellence to stimulate the creativity and energy of hundreds of two-year and four-year institutions.

I was thinking that there are probably are common characteristics among these programs and thought it would be fun and illuminating to review them to get a sense of what makes them exceptional. Our panel of national judges uses criteria to assess the winners each year, but for my own review I used a very informal, non-scientific, non-computerized coding approach (I will call it Culver Coding) to see what came to the top. (Descriptions of all the winning programs are available in a PDF compendium at the Noel-Levitz site.)

When the dust cleared and Culver Coding was deemed successful (by Culver of course), here is what I saw. Most of these outstanding programs have three commonalities among them.